The title of this post is a stealthy way for me to welcome Greg Schwartz as Vice President, Advertising Sales, to Zillow. Greg is based in our NYC sales office and will grow the national sales team across the country. I met Greg in January, and despite having interviewed more than 25 very solid candidates for this super important position, it was immediately clear that Greg was the Zillow guy. He has a background that has straddled the advertising world and the online world having worked for Doubleclick, Yahoo!, and most recently, Time Warner’s CNNMoney.com. This means he can talk CPM in NYC with advertisers and RSS in Seattle with our engineering team. Welcome, Greg!
Now, let me circle back to the title of this post. You’ll notice that we’re not announcing a “VP of Zillow Agent Recruiting” or “VP of Zillow Brokerage”. We have encountered some suspicion from the real estate industry since before we launched a year ago, that it is our stealthy intention to get directly into the real estate agency/brokerage business. This suspicion is fueled somewhat by the fact that we are registered as a broker in most states in the US now, so it is understandable. However, it is a legal decision entirely, kind of a “belt and suspenders” measure, that we have gotten these licenses. We do not operate and have zero intention of operating any brokerages. Believe me, you would see us recruiting and announcing the hiring of a huge number of agency personnel if this were our intention.
Instead you see us announcing our talented new head of Ad Sales, for we are a media company. We make our money now and will make our money in the future by selling advertising to all of those interested in reaching our affluent, engaged, and large audience. If you are an agent, you have already seen us release marketing features for you to get the word out like free posting of for sale homes. Thousands of you have registered and posted homes and we thank you. I also tell you that this is only the beginning of the cool stuff that we will enable to help you demonstrate your expertise, market your listings, and market yourselves on Zillow.com. Thanks for your support.